Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Concealed Emotion Exercise: Tiger Woods speaks publicly

People are already coming out and saying he had no emotion and sounded insincere.Well this seems true, but there are a few hotspots “Red Flags” in his speech.

It is very clear that Tiger has one primary concern at the statement release, selling the speech to his Mom and probably looking to her for comfort.Yes the embracing hug at the end was wonderful, but is not the basis for this evaluation.If you notice, most of the time when he looks to his on lookers the only onlooker his eyes go to is Mom.

To say he has no emotion is not true.The first leakage occurred at about 16 seconds into the video when he states “many of you have cheered for me” and peaks at about 18 seconds when he makes eye contact with his Mom (one of his biggest fans).In fact, during the majority of his speech when he was looking at the onlookers he made eye contact with his Mom.He was likely looking for both comfort and approval from mom.Im not going to go into evaluating Mom.That stands on its own.

At 00:38 Tiger says he is deeply sorry. This emotion seems real, but yes concealed.Now at 00:38 to 00:48for my selfish and irresponsible behavior, I engaged in.” his blink rate increases significantly, which is a hotspot for possible deception.

This is possibly a product of both him feeling truly sorry for disappointing many people, and as some would argue, the increased blink rate would indicate he did not deem his behavior as selfish.

The first minute is the most telling as he is under the most pressure.Once he was able to get the first “I’m sorry” out, he settles in and becomes more composed and relaxed as we expect from a fierce competitor like Tiger.

Either way, this is a speech that consisted of several hotspots.I do believe he is “truly sorry” for some things, but there are some that are likely a product of good speech writing and rehearsal.

If time and interest from others permit, I will continue the comprehensive evaluation of this speech.Please comment or send me a message if you are interested in more.